The present invention relates to a pedestrian protection device for a vehicle which is provided at a front portion of a vehicle body.
In case a pedestrian collides with a traveling vehicle from the front, the pedestrian hits against a bumper at a vehicle's front end first and then may hit against an engine hood covering a vehicle's engine room again as a secondary collision. Therefore, some countermeasure for lightening an impact of the secondary collision has been conventionally applied to the engine hood in order to protect the pedestrian.
In case the pedestrian collides with the bumper, for example, a pedestrian having a small body size tends to hit against a front end portion of the engine hood covering the engine room as the secondary collision, while a pedestrian having a large body size tends to hit against a rear end portion of the engine hood as the secondary collision. Accordingly, vehicles have been recently equipped with the engine hood which has some area for protection (hereinafter, referred to as a “protection area”) to lighten the impact of the secondary collision at its front end portion and its rear end portion.
The above-described protection area is generally arranged at a position which is a specified length away from the ground surface right below the front end of the vehicle. For example, in a vehicle which has a relatively low vehicle height, like a sports car, the protection area at the rear end portion of the engine hood is located near an upper portion of a cowl box which is provided at a dash panel partitioning the engine room from a vehicle compartment beyond a rear end of the engine room.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-338528, for example, discloses a hood device for a vehicle, in which actuators are provided at the front and rear end portions of the hood, which lift the hood upwardly, and a bumping member projects rearwardly at a collision.
In general, the cowl box stores hard things, such as a wiper device, so it may be necessary that the cowl box is covered with the engine hood. Herein, in the hood device for a vehicle in which the hood is lifted up and at the same time the bumping member provided inside the hood projects rearwardly so as to cover the cowl box, like the one disclosed in the above-described publication, the bumping member absorbs the impact through its deformation. Therefore, it cannot be said that this hood device performs an impact absorption by utilizing a crash stroke which may be made by lifting up the engine hood upwardly.